DAY ONE

UPDATE: OKLAHOMA COMMUTES THE SENTENCES OF HUNDREDS OF PRISONERS- SEE BELOW

It's a new day in the REGJB county court criminal division as the torch was passed last Friday from Judge Slom, who skedaddled to parts unknown, to Judge Robin Faber  who takes the helm of the ship of county courts. Sails trimmed; course set; the criminal division of county court has a new captain. We wish him bon voyage. 

Isn't is about time the legislature fixed some problems- lord-forbid they actually do something constructive.
Here's a start. Take every second degree misdemeanor- expectorating on the sidewalk; disorderly intoxication; shoplifting; etc., and designate them as infractions. Offenders get tickets and sent to mag court. 
Then take a bevy of third degree felonies and make them misdemeanors. Car theft; possession of cocaine; worthless checks; felony battery; agg assault without a firearm; burglary of structures not residences or businesses (i.e., sheds and the like); burglary of conveyances (for the judges reading, those are cars). 
Free up circuit court judges for the serious cases and utilize county court judges for more serious cases than the shoplifting trials and the like that tie up so much of their time. 

UPDATE: Just in time for this post, Oklahoma commuted the sentences of over five hundred prisoners, many who were serving felony prison sentences for simple drug possession cases which Oklahoma had, in the interim,  reduced to misdemeanors.
Report is here. 

But of course this (In Florida, not Oklahoma)  makes way too much sense for this to occur. So for now Judge Faber and his merry band of men and women robe wearers will go about their daily chores of adjudicating boating without a license  and battery with a toothbrush cases while experienced circuit court judges will spend one week out of every four handing possession of cocaine trials and aggravated assault with a frozen leg of lamb cases that waste everyone's time. 

40 YEARS AGO 
November 4, 1979, in a time before Starbucks Lattes, cell phones, the internet (but not Arpanet) terrorist thugs from the Islamic State of Iran led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overran the US Embassy and took American hostages and held them for 444 days. The violation of international law set in force a series of actions and inactions  that arguably contributed to the election defeat of James Earl Carter (who at 95 currently holds the record for the oldest age achieved by a POTUS-surpassing Geo Herb Walker Bush) by Ronald Wilson Reagan. 
The continued existence of the Islamic state in Iran brings to mind these lyrics by the Boss in Born in the USA:

I had a brother at Khe Sanh 
fighting off the Viet Cong
They're still there, he's all gone